LEXINGTON, Ky. - A former Ohio State teaching assistant who accused suspended Buckeyes tailback Maurice Clarett of receiving preferential academic treatment was arrested last month.

Police said Norma C. McGill threatened a juvenile Sept. 7 at Shiloh Baptist Church in her hometown of Lexington. McGill was being escorted from the building by two church members when she started using coarse language outside, police said.

McGill bit an officer's thumb as he was trying to arrest her, police said.

McGill, 43, was charged with assaulting a police officer, resisting arrest and disorderly conduct. She is being held in the Fayette County Jail on a $5,300 bond, police Cpl. Dori Zirbes said.

It was unclear whether McGill had an attorney.

Ohio State created a committee to review McGill's allegations after they were reported in The New York Times in July.

McGill has alleged that Clarett walked out of a midterm in African-American and African studies, where she was a teaching assistant, in the fall of 2002. She said he was later given an oral exam, which she said was unusual. Clarett passed the course.

Associate professor Paulette Pierce said Clarett did not receive preferential treatment in her class.

The university later suspended Clarett for the season for accepting money from a family friend and for lying about it to investigators.

Clarett has pleaded innocent to a misdemeanor falsification charge. He is accused of filing an exaggerated theft report with campus police in April after a dealership's car he was borrowing was broken into. The police report said cash and stereo equipment worth thousands of dollars was taken.

The report was among factors that led to investigations by the NCAA and Ohio State.